PS:

[incommune]

“It has often been said
there’s so much to be read,
you never can cram
all those words in your head.

So the writer who breeds
more words than he needs
is making a chore
for the reader who reads.

That’s why my belief is
the briefer the brief is,
the greater the sigh
of the reader’s relief is.”
- Dr. Seuss

Posted from writing, ps

Comments

try 3

[siraka]

You would start posting all of this stuff just before NaNo starts. :/
The rules I had never heard being that I've not taken a creative writing class.
The rules however I might obey, mostly.
Still, I love my, "she sighed" and "he chortled" type phrases.
They help me to shape personalities.

PS
Rule #11: Never ever try to write and edit whilst working in a hectic environment. ^_~

[incommune]

The speech tags thing I bend. But for a final product, always keeping an eye on letting the dialog have the spotlight. "Get out of the way!", said the instructor of the (very good) workshop I attended this summer. The point is, you don't need to describe how every line dialog came out of a character's mouth - if you need to, the dialog is failing to do what it is intended to do. You have to be able to trust the reader, and trust the capability of your writing, to convey the characters, the scene, without needing to explicate every piece.

Secondly, it's NaNo. I love words. I love language, adverbs, ridiculous over-description. NaNo gives us permission. Go nuts! If you come out at the end of the month with something you really like and want to go forward with, it's easier to clip overwriting out of a good story than ramp up a bad one with bells and whistles, no?

[skippytoad]

I heart Dr. Seuss.

[incommune]

I know, right? I figure I can at least keep this in mind, like many other life lessons from Dr. Seuss.

[skippytoad]

If I had things my way, I'd carry around Oh Say Can You Say ALL THE TIME. And read it to people on the train. :)

[incommune]

Why not? It's not a very big book.

I like the one about the East Beast and the West Beast best.